Vint Cerf, founding father of the Internet and Google's underemployed Net evangelist, has a theory: The Internet will kill the television set. The problem is that online-video initiatives are focused on streaming media. Cerf proposes a shift towards downloadable, Internet-delivered content — called "IPTV," after the Internet Protocol Cerf helped invent. IPTV would work more on the TiVo model of record now, watch later. According to him, it would then be possible to serve content faster than real-time — it would take 16 seconds to download an hour's worth of video on a 1 gigabit-per-second connection — which would eliminate strain on service providers and placate consumers seeking videos without jagged images and distorted sound. Or we could all just use BitTorrent.

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